


The Undead

by JSevick



Series: The Alias Complex [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, One-Shot, my first attempt at angst, plot shamelessly stolen from alias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:51:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JSevick/pseuds/JSevick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a sad commentary on her life that this is not the first time Felicity is attacked. But this time is different… and it changes everything in an instant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Undead

**Author's Note:**

> More notes at the end—however, one thing up front. I debated spoiling this or not, but just in case the melodramatic beginning scares anyone off (and I know some people are strongly opposed to this), there is NO major character death in this story. That said, there is a LOT of angst, so your mileage may vary.
> 
> Anyone who knows Alias will know what's up--but I'm taking a lot of liberties here.

Later, much later, when she’s had time to process all of it (if she ever really can), she still won’t be sure if it’s better or worse that they hadn’t even unpacked yet when it happened. It means some of the boxes still at the loft were spared, and she hadn’t wasted hours selecting paint colors and art for the walls, and there were no memories of laughing in the kitchen over spilt flour or yelling frantically as the toilet starts overflowing or fighting over the remote in the calm evening hours—memories that might ache in her chest later.

But it also means there are no memories to hold tight to her heart… after.

Felicity has had a lot of distinct befores and afters in her life—before and after her father left, before and after Cooper—and sometimes she doesn’t even remember what it was like “before Oliver.” That one snuck up on her, though, with the occasional odd appearance of the company’s prodigal son in the IT department, getting more and more frequent and less believable until suddenly it was her everything. She looks back and it’s obvious; at the time, she never knew if each visit would be his last, and she didn’t think too much about it.

There is no mistaking this before and after; there is no escaping it.

And there is no going back—she still can’t decide if it would hurt more if they had unpacked, if they had gotten married right away like they teased instead of waiting for a lavish wedding, if they had been in the new house for more than a week…

If they had _lived_ …

XXXXX

Felicity dances back and forth in front of the sink, music spilling from the tiny set of speakers on the counter, singing along as she washes the dishes from last night’s meal. Oliver cooked it, of course, because if anyone would burn down their brand new house on one of their first nights here, it would be her.

It’s not their first house together, she thinks as she remembers their rental in the suburbs from that first summer as a couple, but this one is… more, somehow. The look in Oliver’s eyes when he saw the _several_ spare rooms down the hall from the master (and the glare in her eyes when she reminded him that the process of filling all those rooms would be far less pleasant for her than for him); the den she thought he’d claim as a man-cave, but he’s already talking to a contractor about wiring and cooling for an entire _server_ , when she thought she couldn’t love him more; the unfinished basement he’s planning to turn into a home gym, as she lobbies for a salmon ladder and shouldn’t maybe her computers be set up down there instead?

The soapy water is warm around her hands, where the metal of her engagement ring scrapes against the pots in a sensation that’s still new to her, even though it’s been a couple weeks. Oliver confessed that he had wanted to wait until they were settled into the new house, until he could recreate his first attempt to propose with those souffles (after only _five months_ , the ridiculous man), but he had just blurted it out after the latest disaster that nearly claimed them both.

Now, all they have to wait for is the wedding, and she isn’t even sure they’ll make it until then. She imagines hastily calling a justice of the peace over the latest bumps and bruises, and while the thought should make her scared or concerned, by this point it just makes her smile.

The song changes, and in the brief moment of quiet she might hear a creak—but then, the house is just settling. She’s still getting used to its noises.

She wonders where Oliver is in his list of errands—the meeting with the political consultants, lunch with Thea (that she insisted he go to alone, because he and Thea need to keep their bonding time, and when she’s there he just ends up sitting silently and watching them talk with a contented smile), the dry cleaners, the grocery store… She offered to take the last one, but she always buys the wrong kind of kale, or whatever disgusting greenery he’s into this week.

Maybe they should start planting a vegetable garden, she thinks, looking out the window over the sink at the backyard. It stretches out in front of her, lined with trees and the neglected flowerbeds the last owner abandoned, the lawn a deep green and the perfect size for backyard sports. And the concrete patio, large enough for a long table and a grill and even a couple lounge chairs; maybe a hammock beneath the trees, she thinks as she plans it out in her head. Part of her had wanted a pool, but she knew Oliver hated swimming—and besides, the neighbors have a pool, so maybe when the kids…

With a private little smile, she lets herself live in that future for a moment. A couple of kids, shrieking with laughter as they scurry around the grass away from their giant father—who chases them, growling playfully with arms outstretched to catch their little bodies against his chest, pressing stubbly kisses to their soft cheeks as they squirm and giggle.

The blow to the back of her head slams her forward into the window that for one blissful moment held her future.

She drops the pan she’d been rinsing into the water with a splash that sends foamy water spilling over the edge of the sink, her forehead cracking the glass before she tumbles backwards limply. Whoever hit her from behind lets her fall to the hardwood floor with a heavy thud, though she barely feels it through the haze in her skull. Her glasses have slid askew across her face, and through the edges of the tilted frames all she can make out are black boots.

It’s the second blow, the sharp kick to her side that knocks the air from her lungs with a startled cry, that first alerts her this is no ordinary attack—no simple kidnapping, no waking up tied to a chair in an hour waiting for the Green Arrow to find her. There’s a malevolence here, an unnecessary cruelty, not the cold but rational practicality of many criminal endeavors.

When the toe of the boot digs again into her stomach with brutal force, until she’s coughing up saliva and bile over their beautiful new floor, she thinks of Oliver. She doesn’t want him to come home and find her, she doesn’t want this to be the end of the amazing optimism he took so long to discover.

She wants to leave him some last sign, she wants… but she can’t _think_ past the blood dripping from the cut across her forehead and the gasping sobs through her aching stomach…

And then she smells the smoke.

XXXXX

The first thing that comes to her is the feeling of the gritty asphalt scraping across her cheek, as she shifts groggily in waking. And the smell of wet pavement and mud just beneath her nose, the lingering taste of copper in her mouth from some kind of drug, she guesses. The sounds of the city rise around her, cars honking and sirens in the distance… no, getting closer.

There’s also someone standing over her, a kid she sees when she squints open her eyes beneath the glasses on her face—and she starts to feel the hard ground more completely beneath her, flat and unyielding under her shoulder and hip. With a groan, she sits up, hand automatically coming to her head to brush away little bits of gravel and smudges of dirt.

 _Why am I in an alley,_ she thinks, her first thought when the heavy sleepiness has cleared, because the tall blank buildings on either side and the rotten smell of the dumpster signals this is, indeed, an alley.

Then she thinks of home—and it all floods back to her, in bright painful flashes like electric shocks. She can’t put it together completely, the movie in her head skipping around, but she remembers falling to the floor, she remembers the agony in her stomach, she remembers… the smoke.

And the blood, dripping hot down the side of her nose… She reaches up a hand to her forehead, but the skin there is smooth and unmarked—other than a tiny raised line near her hair that she doesn’t remember. As she continues the examination, still ignoring the kid who has backed away down the alley since she sat up, she finds no pain from the attack, no sensitive flesh across her stomach.

“Ma’am!” a voice shouts, and a police officer is rushing towards her. _Star City_ , the badge says as the woman kneels in front of her, so at least there’s that. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t… know,” she says, because she doesn’t. She feels okay, but how is that possible? And why is she _here,_ in the _street_? Where is her house?

Where is Oliver?

“Do you know what happened?” the police officer asks.

Felicity looks up, feeling the first sharp stab of fear, the first premonition that something very wrong has happened—more wrong than usual.

“N-no,” she says shakily. “I… I need to get home.”

“I think we need to take you to the hospital,” the police officer says, gently, calling into her shoulder radio for an ambulance.

Felicity is sliding her hands over her clothes, ones she doesn’t recognize; tight, dark jeans and a black tank top beneath a black jacket. Since when does she wear all black? And there’s nothing in the pockets—no money, no wallet, no _phone_ … No purse or bag anywhere around her.

It’s the hair that frightens her the most, when she reaches up to grab the ponytail at the back of her head. Because it’s at least four or five inches longer than it was this morning…

Which she realizes, with a sharp intake of breath, was not _this morning_. She has no idea when it was.

And when she pulls her hand away, her engagement ring is gone.

“I need—I need a phone, I need wifi,” she says, voice rising, tears starting to fill her eyes. What is _happening_?  She starts to rise, but the police officer places a firm hand on her shoulder, telling her not to move.

Through loud sirens and calm hands lifting her onto rolling stretchers and beeping machines in the back of the ambulance, Felicity says nothing. The cursory check of her body is revealing no injuries, and the pen light flashed across her eyes indicates no stroke, no intoxication, but she can’t bring herself to speak. If she opens her mouth, she’ll start screaming for answers and fighting to get free, and they will sedate her.

They put her in a room for observation, alone, calling for a psych evaluation. Felicity sheds the foreign clothing for a hospital gown that feels somehow more familiar, even comforting. But as she strips, she sees changes to her body as well—a few new scars, across her arms and legs, breaking up the skin that’s paler than she’s ever been; the lines of her face are a little deeper, and she has a new piercing in her ear, though no earring; and she’s thinner, less muscle tone along her arms and thighs, which she had painstakingly gained through working out with Oliver—not too extreme of a change but _not_ what she had… this morning, she thinks again with a fresh wave of tears while staring into the mirror.

_Where is Oliver?_

The door to the room opens, and Quentin Lance stands hesitantly in the doorway. He, at least, looks mostly the same, hair still trimmed short and face slightly weary with the trials he’s faced.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, in a gruff voice that’s almost… trembling? And his eyes are watery as he looks at her. “How you doin’? Should you be outta bed?”

“Captain Lance,” she says, taking a breath as she crosses the room to him. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to say it, I have no idea what’s going on and I’m freaking out. Like, seriously trying not to rip my own hair out—my long, freaky hair—and part of me thinks they’re going to come in and strap me to that bed any minute because, clearly, I’ve lost my mind. And I keep asking for a phone or a tablet or anything with wifi, I mean, I’d settle for one of those tiny little smart watches or a PDA from the nineties or-”

“Whoa, whoa,” he says, grabbing her flailing hands tightly in his own—which are a little sweaty and definitely quivering. “I gotta say, I thought I wouldn’t miss that, but I _did_ , kiddo. I did.”

“Miss what?” she asks, but she’s distracted from the stricken expression on his face by the appearance of John Diggle in the doorway, his entire being… _braced_.

Digg says something soft to someone she can’t see just outside the doorway, and then before she can ask him anything, Lance has released her hands to step aside so Digg can sweep her into this strong bear arms. She squeaks against his chest, but his grip only tightens, his face pressed to the top of her head.

“I’ll just, uh, give you two some time,” Lance says roughly.

Digg lifts his head. “Could you-”

“I got it,” he says, closing the door, and Felicity hears him start to speak to whoever’s out there when the clasp clicks shut.

Another moment passes of Digg just holding her, and as safe and warm as it is, it’s also a little awkward.

“Um, Digg?” she asks, and his hands settle firmly on her shoulders, pulling her away to look into her face.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asks, eyes taking in the hospital gown and her bare arms. His eyes are wet, slightly wild, but his expression is the same competent military man she knows so well.

“No, no, I’m not… _What is going on?_ ” she asks. “No one will tell me. And the house—Digg, the _house_ , there was someone, all I saw was boots, Oli-”

“Felicity.” He looks at her for a long time, and his expression closes tightly. “Let’s sit down.”

When she slowly lowers onto the edge of the bed, he pulls over a chair and sits in front of her, taking her hands in his to squeeze them tightly.

But he still doesn’t say anything, just taking deep breaths.

“John, _please_ ,” she whispers.

He releases one hand to run a hand over his face, and she can see the glisten of tears caught under his eyes, and her stomach churns painfully.

“Felicity, you… We… We thought you were dead,” he says, and he can’t look at her, his eyes fixed on her knees. Her bare knees, down to her feet where her toenails are not painted—and neither are her fingernails, she realizes, and she can’t remember the last time she’d ever left them bare. Her hands start shaking.

“ _Dead_? But… how? After all we’ve seen, you didn’t-”

Digg looks up at her sharply. “We _did_ , Felicity, _we did._ But there was a fire at the house. The… body, it was your size, it had your dental records, even your DNA—and your ring… The body wasn’t… recognizable, but everything said it was… you.”

His eyes slide away, bleak. “We still took it to the Pit. Nothing happened.” There is a world of pain in those last words.

All the breath flows out of her body, not in a whoosh but in a slow trickle, as though she’s been punctured, left empty.

“You did all that?” she asks, voice wobbling. “H-how? How long…?”

Diggle breathes deeply through his nose, and says on the exhale, “Two years.”

“Two _years_?” she gasps out in a sob, folding forward as Diggle catches her shoulders, lunging out of the chair to pull her in against his chest.

She had known time had passed, that something had happened—the hair, the nails, the scars—but two _years_ … Her heart is pounding, the sound of blood crashing in her ears, the catch of breathless whines in her throat… Digg just holds her, hands stroking up and down her back.

Then she grabs the sleeves of his t-shirt and hauls herself up, staring wildly into his face. “John, where is Oliver? _Where is Oliver?_ ”

For too long, he says nothing, and Felicity starts imagining the worst and her hands clench so tightly into his shirt that the wrinkles are digging lines into her palms.

“He’s at A.R.G.U.S.,” Digg says finally.

That throws her, and she releases him, sitting back. “A.R.G.U.S.? Why would he be there? He didn’t start working for them or something because _that_ would be-”

“Felicity… he’s in the Suicide Squad.”

“He’s… what?” She just gapes at him, as Diggle once again runs his hand over his mouth, sighing.

“He was too valuable an asset to rot in jail—or, more likely, be killed there,” he says, somewhat flatly. “You know Waller. She cut him a deal. Honestly, I’m shocked every time he comes back from a mission without having walked off the grid and triggered the bomb, but I think he feels that’s where he belongs.”

“In jail for _what?”_ Her mind is trying to put together all the pieces, trying to leap through the gaps in her knowledge like deciphering a code, but there’s just too much missing.

There are two _years_ missing.

“We were so sure we had the guy that… killed you,” Digg says, and now his voice is wry and bitter with irony. “We just, we _knew_ it, but we couldn’t get the evidence. Lance wouldn’t arrest, Laurel almost lost her job pushing the case, but… nothing. The guy was just going to walk.”

He looks her right in the eye. “So Oliver ended it. And not… subtly.” He shakes his head, smiling without humor. “We had a hell of a time just keeping him alive, let alone keeping him _together_ , and it… It all kind of fell apart. He got busted, and that was it.”

Now the look on Digg’s face is hovering on the edge of collapsing, though he’s still smirking. “And the guy didn’t even do it. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” she whispers back, weakly.

“But someone did this,” Diggle says, and now his voice is hard, his eyes intent as he leans forward. “Do you remember anything, Felicity? Anything at all?”

“It feels like it was this morning,” she says in a small voice, bottom lip quivering. She has to be dreaming, right? Or hallucinating? Unconscious fever dreams from her head wound?

Because she _can’t_ have blinked and lost _two years_ of her life…

“Okay, okay, ssh,” Diggle is saying, and she realizes she was starting to hyperventilate. He eases her forward, warm hand strong on the back of her neck, and she stares at the speckled linoleum tiles of the hospital floor like a maze she can find her way out of.

Then the door opens, and Lance is peering in, looking uncomfortable at interrupting. “Look, John, I’m sorry but I gotta go—I gotta tell Donna before she hears…”

Felicity looks up, intending to ask about her mother, because she can’t even imagine how _that_ is going to go—but freezes when she sees the small figure peeking around Lance’s leg.

“That’s… that’s _Sara_?” she asks around a sob, because the toddler she saw _yesterday_ is up to Lance’s hip, a sparkly pink backpack over her shoulders, a cloud of dark curls around a face that belongs to a kindergartner…

And peering at her with uncertain eyes that clearly don’t recognize her, even when Felicity can see this is the baby she fed mashed peas and promised she would teach how to code and held against her hip while the tiny head rested in sleep against her shoulder…

Diggle eases her onto the bed, as she curls onto her side, trying to breathe past the sobs wrenching through her throat.

And the _pain_ …

That’s when she knows this is real.

XXXXX

The doctors examine her, and what they find is too much and not enough all at once. Physically, she’s fine, any wounds healed—but there were wounds, clearly. Not many, not like Oliver, but enough to make her not want to hear anymore about them.

Because the doctor with the warm, sympathetic eyes tells her, gently, that they are _defensive_.

They also tell her that the loss of muscle density is consistent with prolonged captivity—it could be worse, one assures her, and without signs of bed sores or complete muscular atrophy, she was clearly moving around.

That’s when she throws up, but she recovers quickly.

As for her memories, there’s no head trauma consistent with the amnesia; it must be a drug, but to have taken out such a specific and exact chunk of her memory…

The neurologist tells her, so bluntly that the other doctor reaches out and takes her hand, glaring at him, that she had to be complicit in the procedure.

She _wanted_ to forget.

After all that, after her first shaky attempts at eating, after all the scans and tests to rule out any more surprises, they finally let her mother in.

And it’s Donna’s wailing as she runs forward on spiky heels and buries Felicity’s face in her cleavage and sobs around her, the smell of thick sweet perfume and the clink of jewelry, that starts to bring Felicity back to herself. Because if there’s one thing that feels normal, it’s dealing with her mother.

With a clean bill of health (at least on the surface), and a fresh pair of comfy clothes that Lyla buys her (because she is _not ever_ letting her mother dress her, not even now; and Lance takes the clothes she was wearing away in an evidence bag), Felicity is released. She’s taken, in Captain Lance’s police cruiser, to his house— _where her mother lives with him_.

The strangeness of that makes her give a strangled chuckle, and then she’s laughing hysterically, and her mother starts sobbing again.

But Lance is good for her mother, calm and firm, guiding them both inside where Laurel gives her an anxious and uneasy hug, and Thea throws her arms around her so tightly that the others have to pull her away so Felicity can breathe. Everybody deals with it a lot better than expected, because none of them are new at this. She’s not sure if she’s grateful, or if it’s the saddest thing she’s ever seen.

She can tell that Thea’s hiding something, and fears some other tragedy awaits her until Thea pulls a ring from her pocket to slip on, saying she didn’t want to overwhelm Felicity…

Or remind her.

Because there’s clearly one person not here among all of them, as they wrap her in blankets and feed her mint chocolate chip ice cream (which she almost can’t eat, it’s too sweet for some reason) and try to slowly catch her up without pushing her over the edge.

Barry arrives that evening, pausing outside on the porch to slow down before bursting in because at least some of the people inside don’t know, and he’s barely through his tearful, affectionate greeting when she’s asking if he can take her back. Everyone else looks stunned and uncomfortable, as Laurel jumps up to shoo her father and Donna out of the room with some forced excuse. Grimacing, Barry starts to explain about messing with the timelines, but this is one time in her life that Felicity _doesn’t_ want to hear about the science.

She’s cruel to him, when he keeps saying no, so much that Digg even scolds her, while Barry says it’s alright. She remembers that he too woke up in a different world, maybe even more different than hers, and she holds him tightly while she apologizes.

But there’s only one person she wants to see, and it takes her two long, miserable days to get the clearance from Waller to do it (there _may_ be some vengeful hacking that plays into her victory).

Felicity tries to keep from overreacting as she’s led by the guard to the long, dark hallway of cells, swallowing past the thickness in her throat. There are too many emotions swirling in her like a maelstrom—sadness that he’s _here_ , worry and anger that they haven’t told him yet, fear that he’s hurt or changed or… gone.

Fear that the man she kissed goodbye, really just a peck, absentmindedly over her shoulder as he rushed out the door late as always (why, _why_ didn’t she grab him and pull him back and kiss him properly? Why did she ever leave his arms?)—that the man she kissed _three days ago_ is gone forever.

So when the guard opens the thick metal door with loud clanks and the screeching of the hinges, she can’t feel much other than the fluttering in her stomach and the racing of her heart.

Inside, the man drops heavily from the salmon ladder, his back still to the door, and she’s already crying—because the salmon ladder, the _salmon ladder_ , and he’s _shirtless,_ it’s really _him_ …

The door is left open, because they’ve got their fingers on the trigger anyway, but the guard steps to the side to stand watch.

The man doesn’t turn, shoulders heaving as he breathes, and it’s the same broad shoulders and rough scars and solid muscle—her eyes, even through the haze of her tears, scans his skin for new scars, new pain that she _missed_. She knows they’re there, even if they’re not on his skin.

With a breath, she takes a step inside, slowly, and the man spins suddenly with a weary, “What?”

Then he stills, his entire body jerking to a sudden stop, his face going completely blank.

But it’s _his_ face, it’s _Oliver_ … his beard’s a little thicker, his hair a little longer, but it’s the same chiseled lines and square jaw and piercing blue eyes and that one slightly more arched eyebrow…

For a moment, she waits for him, to move, to blink, to run to her—or for her to gather the strength to move her foot an inch towards him.

“No… _no_ … _WALLER!_ ” he roars suddenly, so raw and furious that she involuntarily takes a step back. “What the _fuck_ did you give me?”

“O-Oliver,” she says quietly, voice breaking. She’s never seen him this angry.

He closes his eyes, hands tightening into fists at his side, veins running up his arms like streaks of lightning.

“It’s… it’s, um, really me,” she says, feeling stupid as she says it, as he shakes his head with a rough jerk as though dispelling the echo of her voice, and she just keeps talking into the tense silence because that’s what she does. “I know—I _know_ this is a lot—and they really should have prepared you better, whoever’s idea this was is getting spammed for _life—_ but I mean, I sort of feel like we should all be used to it by now, because really, this is just getting ridiculous. Sara _alone-_ ”

“F… _Felicity?_ ” It’s the broken creak of hope in that whisper, so guarded and uncertain, as he opens eyes that are shimmering in the flourescent light and stares at her, that has her running across the room.

He doesn’t move, other than a flinch, when she throws her arms around him. She doesn’t care about the sweat, it’s _familiar_ , and she’s trying to hold back sobs because maybe this isn’t about _her_ for now (and that’s actually nice after the last couple of days, to take care of someone _else_ ). Pushing her nose into the side of his neck, standing up on tip toes, she just breathes him in while he stands there, arms hanging limply at his sides.

Slowly, _slowly_ , his head tips forward to ease into the curve of her shoulder, and she can hear his breathing getting jagged and rasping, coming in uneven huffs.

She trails her fingertips back and forth up the back of his neck, and murmurs softly into his ear, “Easy there, big guy.”

That’s when he breaks, staggering forward a step as though he might fall to his knees if he didn’t catch himself and catch _her_ , his arms wrapping around her so tightly that they’re left with one heartbeat between them. And he’s gasping against her neck, shaking beneath her, as she strokes her hands across his back and combs them through his hair, mumbling endlessly in his ear—although it isn’t helping because every so often he laughs roughly at some inane thing she says, and then he sobs harder.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there, she doesn’t _care_ , because he’s the first thing since she woke up in that alley that feels like… _home_.

And if she thought her pain was a searing brand beneath her skin, his is a wild animal unleashed from being barely tamed—because while she woke up after two years like it was an hour, he had to _live_ those two years… without her.

When he’s caged the beast again, pulling away with eyes that are bloodshot but starting to look whole again, he cradles her head in his hands and examines every inch of her face, as she does his. They say nothing (for once, she’s able to manage), not about the new lines or creases or darkness in their eyes. She kisses the new calluses on his fingers, as he skims his lips across the side of her jaw and up to her earlobe, burying his nose into her hair and inhaling deeply.

Felicity is just trying to figure out how to distract him from examining her bare arms and seeing her scars—examining all of her, really, because she does not want to have that conversation _now_ —when Amanda Waller appears in the doorway backed by several guards.

Oliver’s hands tighten almost painfully around her, and she’s trying to grab handfuls of his skin to hold onto him, because she knows what happens now.

“Ms. Smoak,” Waller says calmly, and Oliver expels a long breath.

She expects him to fight, to growl, to grip her tightly, but there’s a resolve in his face as he starts to step back. “Oliver?” she asks, keeping her hands on his shoulders until he reaches up to gently pull them away.

“Will I get to see her again?” he asks Waller over her head, his voice gravelly in his raw throat, and full of resignation. Felicity looks frantically between them both, not understanding what this means. This is not how _her_ Oliver would react.

“I am not entirely without a heart, Mr. Queen,” Waller says. “I am sure certain things can be… arranged.”

Oliver nods quickly, then looks down into Felicity’s face, reaching up one hand to brush down her arm as though reminding himself she’s solid flesh.

“I’m still not sure this is real,” he says softly, eyebrows drawing together as his lips twist wryly—it’s a painful expression, worn and weary and too guarded against the world. “But if it is, Felicity…” He savors the name, saying it slowly and quietly. “If it is, then I need you to be safe. Away from here.”

“What?” she asks, a little sharply, because this _is_ the Oliver she knows—and one she fought so hard to bring out of that brittle, self-sacrificing cage.

“I’m in here for a reason.” His face darkens then, and she can see the moment he realizes the _other_ thing her presence means, though she’s sure whoever he killed for her “murder” was not a good person, if they were all so sure. “I… I belong here.”

“No,” she says automatically, turning to Waller. “How long does he have left in his sentence—his _reduced_ sentence, because that’s a part of this, right? Not just a private cell in A.R.G.U.S. and a _bomb_ in his spine, and by the way, we are talking about that-”

“Felicity,” Oliver says, snagging her hand to regain her attention. “When they… When _I_ …” He huffs a breath, and she feels a renewed wave of hot tears behind her eyelids, because whenever he talks in sentence fragments she melts. “They got me for all of it. And some of what Ra’s put on me. I’m not… This is it.”

“What? _No_.” She shakes her head. “That’s not—that’s not right, that can’t be right. Oliver, you’re a hero, you’re not…”

His face shuts down, as he rocks back away from her, and she stops talking.

“That’s not entirely true,” Waller says from behind her, and Felicity whips around to glare at her, but she holds up her hand to clarify. “It is not true that this is necessarily ‘it’ for Mr. Queen—there are always… ways. And there are people in the government who are _aware_ of varying circumstances, whatever the public justice system may see.”

At first, Felicity is relieved, imagining Oliver free and coming home… Then she thinks of the fire, of the house she hasn’t yet seen (maybe they’ve even rebuilt it by now), of what being an ex-Suicide Squad member who no doubt had an extremely public trial would really look like…

And she knows that life is gone forever.

Later, _later_ , she will mourn that life. She will grieve for the bright green lawn, and the house in the suburbs with the spare bedrooms, and the calculated commute to Queen Incorporated and the Mayor’s Office, and the sparkling white wedding dress, and the ghosts of children giggling in her arms…

For now, she strides forward, pulling Oliver down into a kiss he resists for a brief flinch of time before falling into it.

When she pulls away, she leaves her forehead against his and says, “I came back for you.”

Because she _knows_ , somehow, deep in her soul, that the reason she erased her memories and woke up in that alleyway was for him. No matter how many times they say goodbye, they always come back to each other.  

“So I’m coming back, _here_ , every day, and anyone who tries to stop me better not ever need a computer again, or apply to a job, or use a dating site, or file their taxes online, or so much as _tweet_ ,” she says fiercely, looking back over her shoulder at Waller, whose face is perfectly blank.

Then she turns back to Oliver, whose expression could best be summarized as being full of an affection he’s afraid to feel—at least, that’s how she reads the subtle twitches of his eyebrows and tiny lift at one side of his lips, and she wonders if she has to learn his face all over again.

She will. She will relearn every inch of him, and she will rebuild a life for both of them, out of the ashes of what is left.

“And _we_ are getting married,” she says, as he blinks. “As soon as possible. I’ll freaking ordain _Amanda Waller_ if I have to, it’s happening. And _no_ , I’m not _asking_ , because this has been the worst week—or whatever, you know—of my life, and you _will_ be my husband by the end of it, Oliver Queen.”

His full, beautiful smile breaks through for a moment, though it’s uncertain and vulnerable, as he closes his eyes and expels a tiny breath with the shake of his head that she knows so well, and then the smile disappears into another kiss, but that’s even better.

In that kiss, she sees a new future. It’s rough and it’s difficult and it’s painful at times, but it’s still… them. And that was always the only future she ever wanted.

XXXXX

She takes a job at A.R.G.U.S., because they can always use someone with her skills, and because her job at QI is gone (not that she could go there everyday like nothing happened anyway; but it’s gone to one of the directors, who’s clearly caught between guilt and a reluctance to give up the best job he’ll ever have, and he’s doing fine so she just watches from afar)—and because she is going to keep a close eye on whoever has their finger hovering over Oliver’s life.

She goes to visit Oliver every chance she gets, every break and lunch hour and evening, so much so that her new colleagues tease her about it—she would _work_ and _sleep_ and _live_ in that cell with him if she could, but he refuses to let her. Waller allows the frequent breaks because Felicity does the best work in her department, only occasionally fighting back about the morality of their work, and because Oliver leads the Suicide Squad with a calm command that is more focused and potent than ever. With every mission he goes on, Felicity is out in the field nearby in a van, or over the comms watching on satellite, and if sometimes a pang of the old days hits her and she fights back tears at how simple it all used to be (and when did she ever imagine she would think _that_?), it’s worth it.

At night, alone, sometimes she wakes from a nightmare that disappears so quickly from her mind, all she’s left with is the pounding heartbeat and tingling adrenaline and the taste of bile in her throat. She reaches across the empty bed and imagines Oliver there with her, then thinks of him on his cot in his cell, and starts inventing space warp technology in her head, that could fold the dimensions together so he could be beside her whenever she stretched out her hand. It never works, but it helps her fall back to sleep.

And the nightmares also keep her from wanting to know more about what happened to her those two years. Eventually, she will look, she will _hunt_ the people that did this to her, to _them_ … But right now, she wants to focus on her life, not her death. So she lets the memory drug do its work, and she forgets.

The little house half a block from the A.R.G.U.S. building isn’t much, only three bedrooms and a tiny half-dead yard and no cozy den, but she can walk to work and to Oliver. It’s also unassuming, quiet and unnoticed, able to be found only by the friends who visit—and when she’s been at A.R.G.U.S. long enough, and they’ve both earned enough trust, Oliver is allowed to come visit at the house with Thea and his niece. He has to go back to the cell at the end of the night (because Waller still doesn’t quite trust Felicity not to hack through his implant and disappear into thin air), but there’s a little girl laughing and running clumsily across the lawn as she is chased by her beloved uncle, and Felicity watches through the window with tears running down her cheeks.

She will never have the “before” back in her grasp, and as time passes, she starts to accept that.

But she knows there will be no _after_ loving Oliver Queen.

Or rather, there will _only_ be after. Even after death, they will always find each other.

And be reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone reading this who knows Alias also knows why I put this in my Alias Complex series, even though it’s doing something different than the other entries (I wouldn’t put it in the same ‘canon,’ if you will)—and VERY different from the show. I still might do a longer fic following that arc more faithfully, but I couldn’t really imagine Oliver marrying someone else—or rather, marrying someone he wouldn’t drop like a hot potato if Felicity came back… even though it creates some complex and delicious pining (though I’m not a huge angst fan, and that was some ANGST, y’all). But it only works if we believe that Oliver has at least some love and loyalty for his new wife, and I know Oliver’s a good man, but it’s Felicity. So… this is what I came up with instead. 
> 
> At this point, I am not intending to continue, even though I know there's a lot of things unanswered. But the emotional point of the fic is complete, so for now, this is it. 
> 
> Out on a limb here, guys--whatever you think, thanks so much for reading!!


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